Bits and Bytes of life...: Europe Trip Day 6

By day 6 we were exhausted by the incessant walking, packing bags and catching the Eurail every morning to head out to a different city. The much needed break was on its way as we headed out to Cinque Terre. 2 days in Cinque Terre were supposed to be relaxing and without a typical big must see list except for a half day side trip to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Cinque Terre is a portion of the beautiful Italian Riveria. Cinque Terre means "5 lands" and it is composed of 5 beautiful small towns located along the mediterrean sea. Out of the 5 towns Monterosso and Vernazza are the most visited. We also picked these two towns. It was hard to find any hotel to stay in the main Monterosso town so we stayed at a beautiful B&B in Pignone which was about 15 mins drive from Monterosso. Our B&B receptionist hardly knew any English so we had to use lot of hand signals and kind of play dumb charades to communicate with her. The B&B was located in a serene location, was very clean and nicely decorated. It was the first place I found a hair dryer in my room and I was so excited. My hair really needed some care :).

We started roaming around the town of Monterosso and saw a lot of American tourists with their Rick Steve's book in their hands. Cinque Terre is not among the well known tourism places in Italy even though it is very beautiful. The Rick Steve's book highly recommends it and that's why we had added it to our itinerary. So looking at majority of American tourists there we were joking that Rick Steve's has helped immensely in making Cinque Terre popular. Based on Rick Steve's recommendation we located a small bakery which served these amazing focaccia bread pizzas. We grabbed few of them and of course gelato for lunch. We then just strolled idyllically in the rustic town walking through the narrow alleys and beautiful cobbled streets observing the simple life in Cinque Terre. A fun observation was clothes drying on clotheslines outside most of the houses just like we see in India.

Beautiful sea views

Clothes drying outside the houses

The sunny weather and warm water were very inviting. So we rented a paddle boat for some fun in the water. We swam and did some paddle boating.

Rakesh taking a break

After having fun in the water we headed to the neighboring town of Vernazza by train for dinner. The town of Vernazza was even more beautiful with its small streets, old houses, small vegetable and fruit markets and beautiful views of the sea. Modern transportation is forbidden in Vernazza. There is a barrier which doesn't allow cars to enter except for Tuesdays when the supply trucks arrive.

Checking out the vegetable and fruit markets

Some more strolling later we were ready for scrumptious Italian dinner. We ate some awesome pastas made with fresh locally grown ingredients and drank some local wine while enjoying beautiful sea views from our outdoor seats in the restaurant. Then we hopped on to the train back to Monterosso. We arrived at Monterosso almost at midnight and were worried that we might not find a cab to get back to our B&B as there are only couple of taxis that run in the town. The two cab drivers handle taking the tourists around. As it is a small town you can cover it easily by feet so there is no need of cab. However we were staying a little far off from the town. Luckily the cab driver showed up and we got a ride back to our B&B.